Belle Gibson contravened consumer law, a federal court judge has found. Her penalty will be handed down at a later date

The federal court has found the disgraced wellness blogger Belle Gibson contravened consumer law by building a wellness empire off the back of claims she cured her terminal brain cancer and other cancers through diet and alternative treatments.

Her penalty will be handed down at a date yet to be determined. Consumer affairs has been given a week to come back to the court outlining the appropriate level of costs.

'None of it’s true': wellness blogger Belle Gibson admits she never had cancer

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Gibson, whose full name is Annabelle Natalie Gibson, was not present when the judgment was handed down by Justice Debra Mortimer on Wednesday morning.

The blogger has not defended the allegations or taken part in the proceedings, leaving Mortimer to rely on documents filed by Consumer Affairs Victoria, media reports and affidavits.

Gibson’s product, The Whole Pantry, included a website, mobile phone app and recipe book of the same name. Her story of shunning conventional medicine and curing herself with food began to fall apart in 2015 when it was revealed she never made thousands of dollars in charity donations she promised off the back of money raised through her success.

She then said she had been diagnosed by a German magnetic therapist with cancers she claimed to have in her blood, spleen, uterus and liver and brain, but in an interview with Women’s Weekly, admitted: “None of it’s true.”

She and her company, Belle Gibson Pty Ltd, received more than $280,000 for sales of her app through the Apple store, and an advance of $132,000 for her book by the publisher Penguin.

The comprehensive, 70-page judgment from Mortimer details numerous occasions when Gibson, through The Whole Pantry, promised to donate the proceeds of app sales and ticket sales to events to charities including the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre and the Bumi Sehat Foundation to prevent infant deaths.

Most of the promised donations were never made, the judgment found, or in some cases small donations were made after significant delays and after questions from Fairfax journalists.

Gibson had breached Section 18 of Australian consumer law which states a person must not engage in trade or commerce likely to mislead or deceive. She had also breached some, but not all, parts of section 21 of Australian consumer law, Mortimer found, which prohibits “unconscionable conduct” in connection with good and services. Mortimer also questioned Gibson’s state of mind and said she may have genuinely believed she had cancer.

“Another explanation is that Ms Gibson remained under some kind of delusion that she had cancer,” Mortimer wrote in her judgment.

“She may have had other psychological or psychiatric issues.”

The blogger used her company and its name “as a vehicle to promote herself, and to promote the goods and services she sought to sell, on the basis of her story about surviving cancer”, Mortimer found.

Gibson also gave differing accounts to her publisher, Penguin, and the media, about how she received her brain cancer diagnosis. She claimed in 2009 that she was diagnosed at home by a doctor using a box-like machine with flashing lights. But during a media training interview with Penguin before the launch of The Whole pantry cookbook she claimed to have been diagnosed at St John of God hospital in Perth.

Mortimer questioned Gibson’s rationality.

“How a person acting reasonably and rationally could think a machine of that kind, operated in her home, would detect inoperable brain cancer defies credulity,” she found.

In 2011 the neurology unit at Alfred hospital conducted a brain MRI and told Gibson she was “perfectly healthy”.

Sometime between June and November 2014, Gibson claimed to have seen a naturopath who confirmed her brain cancer diagnosis. She claimed the naturopath, who she said was also a doctor, had diagnosed her with other cancers, including of the spleen, uterus and liver.

Later that year Gibson claimed to have visited a general practitioner who told her she did not have cancer.

After learning this, she did not tell her publisher or Apple and Google, who were supporting and selling her apps, because she claimed her health was a personal matters and because she was “in shock and denial”, Mortimer found.

“Ms Gibson’s explanations are no more than claims or assertions,” Mortimer said.

Gibson also chose not to attend the compulsory examination which she was required to attend by order of the court, and did not defend herself.

“She is entitled to make those choices, but as I note, they have forensic consequences,” Mortimer found.

“There is little to no admissible evidence before me to substantiate the explanations given on her behalf by her legal representatives, nor the explanations she is recorded as giving herself. What admissible evidence does exist tends in my opinion to contradict those explanations, or cast doubt on their veracity.”

Mortimer found that “she was not living with cancer at any stage of her life”, though she was satisfied members of the community had been led to erroneously believe she was. To advantage herself, Gibson “played on the empathy and generosity of the Australian community”, Mortimer found.

But in determining a penalty, Mortimer said the court would need to consider whether Gibson genuinely believed she had cancer, despite no reasonable or rational basis for that belief.

Earlier this week Gibson posted to a Facebook page that she was partaking in a cleaning diet and that the enemas that formed part of the diet had helped her rid her body of a 15cm parasite.